Fiatal iparművészek stúdiója (Ferencvárosi Pincegaléria, Budapest, 1988)

THE "LANDSCAPE-FRAGMENTS" OF TAMÁS SOÓS After figurative compositions combining monumentally with the grotesque and elaborating on characteristic Manierist and Baroque pictorial elements, in 1987 Tamás Sobs made his presence felt with a surprising series of works: "landscape-fragments" painted on small pieces of canvas. Only a bit larger than a palm of the hand, these irregular-shaped, ragged-edged canvasstripes can be interpreted in several ways. They may be looked at as counterpoles to the huge, larger than life "mythical landscapes" with no people. The intimacy of these "landscape-fragments" that can be taken in hand, touched and thumbed makes them similar to the pages of a "painting-book". These small pictures neither aim to amaze nor to shock, they make you meditate. One cannot make head or tale of the sur-human world of the "mythical landscapes" painted with dark colours, suggesting endless spaces and cosmic struggles of giant forces. The depressing void is lightened by enigmatical fires on the horizon. Restless lightnings flash across the sky, dreary clouds swirl. On the contrary, having few colours, greyish blue tones and a thin coat of paint, the "landscape-fragments” fascinated you with their calmness and clear arrange­ment. One can take them in hand to study and discover the clear principles of their visual structure without being subjected to heavy emotional storms. This series is a silent, soft-voiced, modest manifestation. It's not an unblunted expression of the essential drama of existance, but the visualization of the painter's meditation over the real space's relationship to the painted one. That is to say these "landscape-fragments", these small pieces of canvas can be regarded as objects, things with 3-dimensional figure, painted surface, put somewhere in the real space. In this case the painted surface is but an additional element and the pictorialness is just a precious feature on one side of the object — it's not neccessary by all means to take it as an important and determining element. What seem to be more important are the thickness of the canvas-stripes fixed on one another, the plastic effect, the "bodily" character and sensorial material of the narrow and stretched form reminding you of something else. Not of objects in the literal sense of the word but rather the objects of nature: as if the small pieces of canvas were parts of a nature that's been "made” or "created" from the same material. Really these small canvases are like natural objects, parts of another material environment with sensuous characteristics. You wonder at the fineness of their surface, the silkiness of the thin coat of paint, the magic of the strange, faint colours and you don't care about the portrayal of the nature, the picture of the landscape, only about the richness of the nature that created such unique objects as these. For all this, in some pieces of the series the evocative power of the pictorial, the power of the PICTURE steps out of the "jail" i.e. being locked into an object; frees itself from the surface and shows us a virtual space of the imagination. These are the most interesting pieces. Because the small canvasstripes are still like objects and still have their body but the pictorial transforms them and creates an imaginary yyorld around them. According to this interpretation these objects become similar to objects with magic power: they exist as objects, can be touched and "used", but still their substance is to create an aura, an imaginary environment. This imaginary environment, this aura rises above the physical existance of the object, while carries the suggestivity of the sensibility of the surface and that of the strong sensuality of the worked material to an imaginary and fictitious world. The pictorialness preserves the object yet builds other, different imaginary contents upon them. This aura is not the magical aura based on irrational images. It is the sensual radiance of aesthetical creation based on the intimate study of artistic practice and on the meditation over the power of the picture. And as such it sums up once again the dialogue with the painting as a media and its history. In this aspect the "landscape-fragments" by Tamás Soós are to be interpreted from the direction of the aesthetical grasping of wholeness; the need for a comprehensive way of looking at things in uncovered in the fragments. , , , , ,. Lorana Hegyi ■■■■■■■■■ pH I FERENCVÁROSI PINCEGALÉRIA 1988január 6-február 6. ( vX/\. IA • I MMÉ

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